A new agreement on Russia's military base in Tajikistan may take up to nine months to complete despite earlier reports that the deal is near clinched, the commander of the Russian Ground Forces said on Saturday.

"I believe the countries' leaders will sign the deal on the base's continuing stay [in Tajikistan] in the first half of the next year," Col. Gen. Vladimir Chirkin said, as cited by RIA Novosti.

The countries are "very close" to signing the deal, Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said last week.

But Russia has problems getting Tajikistan to agree to prolong the lease on the base for 49 years, Chirkin said on Ekho Moskvy radio. Earlier reports said Dushanbe only wants a 10-year lease.

Negotiators were given time until April to reconcile the terms of the prolonged lease deal, which is now set to expire by 2014, the military official said.

Tajikistan is seeking USD 100 M in annual payments for the base, which hosts 7,000 soldiers across three cities, Russia's biggest military contingent abroad, Chirkin said.

The price may actually be as high as USD 250 M, the Russian daily Kommersant reported earlier this week. Tajik officials dismissed the claim, but said they wanted concessions from Russia on migration policy and oil tariffs.

Under the current deal, Russia does not pay anything for the base, but is required to provide military and technical assistance to impoverished Tajikistan, which weathered a bloody civil war in the 1990s and is currently a major drug trafficking route in the region.

Recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that Russian military bases in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan might be used in order to stabilize Central Asia after the USA and NATO pull out of Afghanistan in 2014.

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